In the ever-changing landscape of manufacturing, additive manufacturing (AM) is transforming the way companies are designing, and manufacturing products. Its promise of design flexibility, cost efficiency, speed, and sustainability makes it an attractive option for manufacturers across various industries.

With around 2 million people worldwide using 3D printers, the technology’s adoption reflects a growing trend towards more customized, on-demand production methods. However, before diving headfirst into the adoption of this technology, it is essential to take a step back and thoroughly assess your current processes. This foundational step ensures a seamless integration and optimization of AM technology, ensuring you gain the maximum return on your investment. Below, we dive into the significance of assessing your current processes as a gateway to the effective adoption of additive manufacturing solutions.

Understanding the Current Process

The first step in any significant change is understanding where you currently stand. Conducting a comprehensive assessment of your existing processes provides a clear picture of your manufacturing operations. This includes evaluating your production methods, supply chain, workforce capabilities, and overall business objectives. By gaining a deep understanding of your current state, you can identify areas where additive manufacturing can bring the most value and pinpoint potential challenges that need to be addressed.

Identifying Inefficiencies the Current Process

Every manufacturing process has its inefficiencies, whether it’s excessive material waste, long lead times, or high production costs. Assessing your current processes allows you to identify these inefficiencies and determine how additive manufacturing can help mitigate them. For instance, if your production involves a lot of material wastage due to subtractive methods, Additive Manufacturing’s layer-by-layer approach can significantly reduce waste. Similarly, if long lead times are a bottleneck, the rapid prototyping capabilities can speed up your production cycles.

Evaluating Cost-Benefit Ratio

Implementing additive manufacturing technologies requires an investment in equipment, training, and potentially reengineering your production workflows. By assessing your current processes, you can conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine the financial viability of adopting Additive Manufacturing. This involves comparing the costs associated with traditional manufacturing methods against the potential savings and added value that it can bring. Factors such as reduced material costs, lower inventory requirements, and increased production efficiency should be considered in this analysis. Companies have seen a 40% reduction in material costs and a 70% reduction in overall product costs by implementing these technologies only increasing their cost to benefit ratio!

Ensuring Compatibility with Existing Systems

One of the critical aspects of integrating additive manufacturing into your operations is ensuring compatibility with your existing systems. This includes your design software, production equipment, and supply chain processes. Assessing your current processes helps identify any gaps or incompatibilities that need to be addressed. For instance, you may need to upgrade your CAD software to support the complex designs enabled by AM or reconfigure your production floor to accommodate new 3D printing equipment. Ensuring seamless integration minimizes disruptions and maximizes the impact of your new manufacturing setup.

Workforce Training and Skill Development

Adopting additive manufacturing technologies often requires a shift in skill sets and knowledge within your workforce. This critical step of assessing your current processes includes evaluating the readiness and capabilities of your employees to work with AM technologies. Keeping in mind that 42% of companies state that the lack of expertise and understanding of AM technologies is the biggest barrier to its adoption, it’s crucial to identify skill gaps and develop a training plan. Equipping your workforce with the necessary knowledge and expertise is not just about a smooth transition, but it is also key to maximizing the benefits of AM. By investing in training and skill development, you’re not only setting the stage for a more effective integration but also empowering your employees to fully leverage the potential of additive manufacturing.

Aligning with Business Objectives

Every business has its unique set of objectives, whether it’s improving product quality, reducing costs, or increasing production speed. Assessing your current processes helps ensure that the adoption of additive manufacturing aligns with your overarching business goals. By understanding how AM can contribute to these objectives, you can develop a strategic implementation plan that maximizes its impact. For example, if your goal is to enhance product innovation, focus on how AM’s design flexibility can drive creative solutions. If cost reduction is a priority, emphasize the potential savings from reduced material waste and streamlined production processes.

Pilot Testing and Iterative Improvement

Before fully integrating additive manufacturing into your operations, it’s prudent to conduct pilot tests. These tests allow you to evaluate the performance of AM technologies in a controlled environment and identify any unforeseen challenges. By assessing your current processes, you can select appropriate pilot projects that provide valuable insights into the practical implications of AM. Pilot testing also offers an opportunity for iterative improvement, enabling you to refine your processes and address any issues before full-scale implementation.

Building a Robust Implementation Plan

A thorough assessment of your current processes provides the foundation for a robust implementation plan. This plan should outline the steps required to integrate additive manufacturing into your operations, including equipment acquisition, workforce training, process reengineering, and timeline management. By having a clear and detailed plan, you can ensure a systematic and organized transition to additive manufacturing, minimizing disruptions and maximizing the benefits.

Conclusion

The promise of additive manufacturing is undeniably compelling, offering a new era of innovation and efficiency in manufacturing. However, to truly harness its potential, it is essential to assess your current processes before diving into implementation. The assessment will provide a clear understanding of your existing operations, identify inefficiencies, evaluate the cost-benefit ratio, ensure compatibility with existing systems, and align with your business objectives. By taking this crucial step, you can pave the way for a successful transition to additive manufacturing, positioning your business at the forefront of technological innovation and operational excellence.

Embracing additive manufacturing is not just about adopting new technology; it’s about transforming your manufacturing processes to achieve greater efficiency, sustainability, and competitiveness. By assessing your current processes and planning strategically, you can unlock the full potential of additive manufacturing and drive your business toward a brighter, more innovative future.

In today’s competitive landscape, the drive toward sustainability has never been more crucial. Industries worldwide are actively pursuing innovative solutions to minimize their environmental impact, striving for sustainability, and ultimately achieving more efficient processes. Traditional manufacturing processes have historically caused issues connected to high fossil fuel consumption, energy usage, waste generation, and pollution, leaving industries searching for environmentally friendly production methods.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is transforming this landscape by introducing a wave of sustainability benefits that significantly lessen the environmental impact while not compromising on quality and innovation.

Here’s how additive manufacturing is increasing sustainability:

Reduced Material Waste

In numerous industries, Additive Manufacturing has made substantial strides in reducing material waste in final parts by as much as 80%. Unlike traditional subtractive processes like machining and casting, which often result in significant material waste during production, Additive Manufacturing builds components layer by layer, utilizing only the necessary material for the part. This additive approach not only minimizes waste but also optimizes material usage, resulting in more efficient production and a reduced environmental impact.

Energy Efficiency

With manufacturing industries’ energy consumption making up 76% of the total usage, Additive Manufacturing shines as a more energy-efficient alternative to traditional manufacturing methods. By streamlining processes and minimizing the need for extensive machining and assembly, Additive Manufacturing lowers overall energy consumption during production.

Additionally, the ability to produce lightweight components through Additive Manufacturing offers significant benefits in sectors such as aerospace and automotive. Lightweight parts lead to improved fuel efficiency in vehicles and aircraft, as they require less energy to propel or lift off the ground. This reduction in weight not only lowers fuel consumption during operation but also contributes to lower emissions and overall environmental impact. By leveraging Additive Manufacturing to create lightweight components, industries can achieve substantial energy savings and contribute to a more sustainable future.

On-Demand Production

Additive Manufacturing revolutionizes the traditional production model by enabling on-demand manufacturing, leading to remarkable benefits for sustainability. This innovative approach significantly reduces the requirement for large inventories and the associated storage costs. By producing items only as needed, Additive Manufacturing eliminates wasted resources and minimizes the environmental impact of excess production.

Localized Production

Additive Manufacturing enables localized production, offering a key strategy to reduce the environmental impact of extensive global supply chains. By manufacturing parts closer to the point of use, companies can significantly lower transportation emissions and support local economies. This shift towards decentralized manufacturing not only reduces the carbon footprint associated with long-distance shipping but also enhances supply chain resilience. By fostering local production, businesses can mitigate environmental and economic risks linked to global disruptions, while promoting sustainability and supporting community growth.

Extended Product Life Cycle

Additive manufacturing facilitates the repair and maintenance of existing products, extending their life cycle. For instance, it can be used to produce spare parts or to repair damaged components, reducing the need to manufacture entirely new products. This capability is particularly valuable in sectors like aerospace, where maintaining and repairing high-value equipment can significantly reduce waste and resource consumption.

Innovative Design

The design freedom offered by Additive Manufacturing allows engineers to create more efficient and sustainable products. Complex geometries that optimize material usage and improve performance can be easily achieved with Additive Manufacturing. For example, lightweight lattice structures and internal cooling channels can be integrated into designs to enhance functionality and reduce material usage. This level of design innovation can lead to products that are not only better performing but also more environmentally friendly.

Materials Selection

The evolution of sustainable materials for Additive Manufacturing is progressing at a rapid pace, with researchers and companies exploring the use of recycled and bio-based materials in 3D printing. These eco-friendly materials not only decrease reliance on finite resources but also play a pivotal role in nurturing the circular economy. Through the utilization of sustainable materials, Additive Manufacturing fosters the recycling and reuse of resources, contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally conscious approach to production.

A Greener Future

Additive manufacturing can enhance companies’ sustainability initiatives by reducing material waste, enhancing energy efficiency, enabling on-demand and localized production, fostering innovative design, and more. It offers a pathway to more sustainable production in a variety of industries. As the technology continues to evolve, its potential to contribute to environmental sustainability will only grow, making it a key player in the green industrial revolution.

At EAC Additive, we are committed to helping companies implement additive manufacturing technology, enabling them to achieve environmentally friendly solutions that not only conserve money, resources, and time but also contribute to a sustainable future for all.

Just like fine wine, Creo keeps getting better with time! Creo 11 by PTC offers numerous enhancements to improve the productivity, usability, and functionality of frequently used tools. In this blog post, we will explore the key updates in Creo 11 that aim to streamline workflows, enhance user experience, and boost efficiency in product design.

Usability Enhancements

Easily Access Creo Options

One of the standout features in Creo 11 is the ability to search and find settings in the options dialog easily. That being said, this enhancement enables you to locate relevant Creo options more quickly, reducing time spent navigating through menus and improving overall efficiency.

Improved Model Tree

Creo 11 introduces improved collapse/expand behavior and renaming capabilities in the model tree. Specifically, these enhancements enhance the user experience by making navigating and managing complex assemblies and parts within the software easier.

Enhanced Drag Handles

Due to popular demand, the software now offers improved drag handles for feature dimensions, simplifying identification and manipulation controls for complex features. This improvement simplifies the editing process and ensures a smoother user experience.

Selection Enhancements

Flexible Selection Options

Creo 11 introduces box, lasso, and trace selection support, providing you with more flexibility in selecting multiple surfaces and entities. You can now toggle between selecting all surfaces or only visible surfaces, improving the precision and speed of selection workflows.

Multi-Body Design for Sheetmetal

With the introduction of multi-body design capabilities for sheet metal parts, Creo 11 simplifies single-part design workflows and enables you to split single sheet metal parts into multiple parts. As a result, this feature allows for greater control over manufacturing and design costs and facilitates the design of multi-thickness sheet metal parts in context.

Simplification Features

Shrinkwrap and Merge Options

A new shrinkwrap option in Creo 11 allows you to collect bodies from referenced assemblies into a single part, streamlining the creation of simplified models. So, merge options for bodies in assemblies offer flexibility to keep separate objects, merge into single bodies, or merge all bodies for efficient design workflows.

Modeling and Design Enhancements

Enhanced Features

Creo 11 enhances modeling capabilities with features such as enclosure volume and new options for point patterns, for increased flexibility, and faster regeneration. These improvements aid in the creation of bounding boxes for optimization purposes and streamline pattern referencing workflows.

Welding and Surfacing Improvements

Welding Capabilities

Creo 11 provides a faster and more flexible definition of spot welds through improvements in spot welding functionality, joint members, and XMCF features. These enhancements increase productivity and eliminate additional steps in the welding process.

Surfacing Enhancements

Surfacing with freestyle and style features, including rotational pattern support, new bevel operations, and improved curve editing controls are new enhancements. These updates offer greater control over curves and surfaces, improved usability, and streamlined workflows for working with multi-level subdivisions.

Design for Electrification

Routed Systems

Creo 11 introduces improvements to routed systems, allowing for easier design and creation of electrical systems within the software. These enhancements include cabling, removal locations capability, dynamic previews in the graphics area, expandable filtering, and undo/redo functionality. These enhancements increase productivity and make designing and managing electrical systems easier within Creo.

ECAD

In addition to the improvements in routed systems, Creo 11 also includes enhancements to ECAD (Electronic Computer-Aided Design) functionality. Users of Solidworks and Inventor might know this as electrical-mechanical integration and compatibility enhancements. Enhanced ECAD visibility simplifies control and understanding of ECAD layer presentation through data visibility. These enhancements improve usability and provide more flexibility in the design of electrical systems.

Design for Composites

In addition, Creo 11 introduces expanded functionality for designing composite materials. This includes the ability to modify transitions in graphics, improved usability for laminate sections, and enhanced draping simulation. These enhancements make it easier to manage and visualize composites, improving usability and productivity. Additional improvements include zone-based design, enabling faster creation of large-scale composite products, and a conceptual top-down approach to composite design.

Model-Based Definition

As for Model-Based Definition (MBD), Creo 11 also includes enhancements to make it easier to organize and manipulate data in a tabular form. MBD enhancements in Creo 11 include creating tables, adding semantic references, and supporting parameter callouts. Also, Creo 11 introduces support for STEP AP242, allowing for the export of PMI (Product and Manufacturing Information) information in a machine-readable format.

Simulation Driven Design

In simulation-driven design, Creo 11 introduces enhancements to improve accuracy and productivity in time-based motion analysis. These include updates to solvers, expanded structural and fluid results, and a new conjugate heat transfer capability. These enhancements allow for faster and more accurate predictions of heat transfer and structural optimization based on simulation results.

Design for Manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing

Connection Lattices

In response to the rise in additive manufacturing demands, Creo 11 introduces a new lattice command to connect two or more separate lattices, giving you more flexibility to create complex lattices. This workflow is straightforward and can be performed inside the same familiar Lattice UX. Additional enhancements include beam lattices, stochastic lattices, randomization value, and defining pore size. Moreover, you can also adjust simplified lattices using warp and export in 3MF/STL format. Finally, Creo 11 has added a penetration option for simplified lattices, providing additional flexibility to prepare parts for 3D printing, particularly in medical implants.

Subtractive Manufacturing

High-Speed Machining

Creo 11 introduces new 4-axis rotary roughing and finishing toolpaths, which can pass 360 degrees and be used for crew-type parts. Also, Creo 11 supports end mill, ball mill, and bull nose mill. These enhancements provide automated roughing and finishing sequences, which will be applicable for automotive and oil field crankshafts, camshafts, and drill heads.

Milling

Another enhancement is trajectory milling or CAM Programming, which allows you to define entry and exit movement along the direction of the cut, reducing the possibility of breaking small tools. This method is also more efficient, saving time spent on retracts. Additionally, Creo 11 supports curves not on the surface and trim retract motion to a plane. You can now easily manage the display of manufacturing geometry in the graphics toolbar.

Turning

Creo 11 has modernized 4-axis area-turning user interfaces, providing a streamlined and consistent user interface across all toolpaths. Improved material removal cut functionality for profile turning and additional area turning capabilities have also been added to the 4-axis. Creo 11 now supports user_output_point, CUTCOM support at each slice, clear distance, and turn profile start and end driving the cut direction.

These enhancements in Creo 11 provide you with greater flexibility, productivity, and efficiency in all areas of your product design. By incorporating these new features, Creo 11 continues to lead the industry in product design and manufacturing. You can watch the Creo 11 Webinar to learn more at your convenience or reach out to one of our experts to see which enhancements would benefit you the most!

The majority of businesses aspire to achieve sustainability but often lack clarity on where to begin. Many perceive adopting sustainable practices as a daunting task, believing it necessitates a complete overhaul of their production processes to make a significant impact. However, let me assure you that this is not the case.

So, where should you start your journey towards creating more sustainable product design and manufacturing processes?

To genuinely embrace sustainability, focus on making design decisions at the outset. Designing for repair, reducing material usage, refurbishment, remanufacturing, recovery, reuse, and recycling is crucial. It requires a holistic approach that considers a product’s environmental impact throughout its lifecycle.

Over 80% of a product’s environmental impact stems from design decisions made early on.

Here are three ways design changes can drive sustainability:

Sustainability in Design for Dematerialization

Dematerialization, or material usage reduction, emerges as a crucial strategy for sustainability, aiming to reduce material consumption and weight without sacrificing strength and durability. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies like Generative Design, engineers can optimize designs to use only the necessary amount of material, tailored to specific loads and constraints of each application.

Creo Simulation Live offers a seamless platform for quickly assessing how different materials or reduced material usage affect design performance, enabling adjustments earlier in the design process.

Moreover, with solutions like Creo AMX, designers leverage additive manufacturing capabilities to build structures in the most efficient direction, generating automated supports, and showcasing the potential of lattice structures.

These innovations not only allow for a material reduction but pave the way for lighter, more sustainable products that maintain the required level of performance. As we continue to prioritize dematerialization in manufacturing, we edge closer to a future where sustainability and efficiency are seamlessly integrated into every aspect of product development.

Sustainability in Design for Waste Reduction

Designing for manufacturability and minimizing material waste, such as through minimal stock allowance, ensures efficient use of resources from the outset. By leveraging die casting for near-net shape production throughout the manufacturing process, material waste is significantly reduced to maximize material utilization and minimize scrap generation.

Additionally, utilizing numerically controlled (NC) strategies optimized for fast machining and lower energy consumption, such as high-speed machining (HSM) roughing and finishing, contributes to waste reduction and energy efficiency.

Moreover, designing for ease of service and assembly extends product lifespan and reduces the demand for new products. While some parts of a product may wear faster than others, creating products for easy disassembly eliminates waste because you do not have to throw away the entire product to extend the lifespan.

Accurate documentation of assembly and disassembly instructions empowers users to maintain and repair products, minimizing waste and promoting a more sustainable approach to product lifecycle management.

Sustainability in Design for Energy Efficiency

Engineers globally actively address questions such as, “Can we reduce noise and unneeded energy consumption in design?” and “Can we make our design more thermally efficient?” to pave the way for eco-friendly innovation.

Their goal is to pinpoint areas where energy is wasted, but don’t have the most efficient tools to accomplish that task. Modal analysis and thermal analysis enable more streamlined and environmentally conscious designs. Additionally, tools like Creo Flow Analysis optimizes flow efficiency to ensure that products operate with maximum efficiency, minimizing energy requirements without sacrificing performance.

Furthermore, selecting materials that demand less energy to manufacture and recycle adds another layer of sustainability to the design process and reduces the overall environmental impact from production to end-of-life disposal. Through these proactive measures, energy-efficient product design becomes a tangible pathway towards a more sustainable future.

Sustainable Design Solutions

Our suite of Creo design tools supports sustainable practices:

Designing for sustainability benefits both the environment and businesses. Companies can significantly reduce their environmental footprint by considering dematerialization, disassembly, and behavioral modeling.

By partnering with EAC for solution identification and utilizing PTC’s comprehensive Creo design tools, companies can pave the way for a sustainable future while improving their bottom line. Let’s talk about how EAC can help you identify solutions to help your company embrace sustainable design practices today!